Father's Day Inspiration
This Father's Day I wanted to share a little about my father, Lester Woolery, who is one of my biggest inspirations. My father was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica in 1929. Jamaica is a tropical paradise now but I can not imagine how pristinely beautiful it was in the 1930s. My father always told me one of his favorite memories was going swimming in the ocean with his friends every day before school.
My father came from very modest means but he was extremely bright and was accepted to a prestigious high school, Cornwall College. After high school, he wanted to study pharmacy. At that time, in order to become a pharmacist, you did an apprenticeship with a physician. Instead, he earned a scholarship to attend the University of London in England. When he returned to Jamaica, he was the first formally trained pharmacist on the island. He started his career at the Ministry of Health as the Director of Pharmacy. His job was to make sure that all essential medicines like antibiotics were readily available and accessible to the people of Jamaica.
After 20 years of public service, he moved to the private sector and created the pharmaceutical division of Lasco, a large consumer products company in Jamaica. My father had a tremendous work ethic. He traveled extensively for work and often took me along on his trips. In retrospect, I think it was so incredibly progressive that he would take his teenage daughter with him to meet with executives at huge pharmaceutical companies like Novartis and Pfizer. During his meetings, I would wait patiently reading, and then at the end of the day, we would go out and have lots of fun exploring whatever city we were visiting.
My father loved to garden and he grew roses as a hobby. He was so proud of his roses and could endlessly discuss things like the soil pH required to achieve the perfect color. He was also a renaissance man and who studied Latin and would spontaneously quote Shakespeare just for fun. My father passed away 2 years ago but his legacy lives on as one of the founders of modern pharmacy in Jamaica and also as being an incredibly wonderful father.